Another View: For April 16, 2014

We thought the U.S. Secret Service was an elite corps of highly disciplined agents whose mission was to protect the president and other high-ranking officials.

In recent years, they seem more like a pack of drunken frat boys turned loose on the world. Clearly, the organization has problems with booze and rowdy behavior.

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In recent weeks, the service tallied two more incidents of suspected alcohol consumption by agents on official trips.

In Miami, during a presidential trip, two counter-sniper officers suspected of drinking were involved in a car wreck.

More recently, an agent working a presidential visit to the Netherlands was found black-out drunk in a hotel hallway and had to be carried into his room by hotel employees. He had been out carousing until 2:30 a.m. with two other agents, all of whom were scheduled for work at 10 a.m.

Isolated incidents? If only. They are part of a lengthening pattern of irresponsible behavior.

There was that 2011 incident involving strippers in El Salvador. And a 2012 instance in which an officer was found passed out and drunk on a sidewalk in a Miami nightclub district.

But all of those pale in comparison to the Colombian prostitution scandal.

Two years ago, a dozen agents and officers were part of a drunken partying spree involving prostitutes at a Caribbean resort. Eight Secret Service employees were forced out of the agency and another may yet lose his security clearance.

The incident prompted soul-searching, an Inspector General report and promises the agency would be cleaned up.

Yet, it doesn’t seem like the reforms have fully changed the ageny’s culture. Some agents still don’t seem to understand that the party’s over.

— Denver Post March 31

Town’s voters on target in sinking drone-hunting idea

Common sense has prevailed in Deer Trail, Colo., and for that we have voters to thank.

Residents went to the polls recently and overwhelmingly shot down a ludicrous proposal to issue drone-hunting licenses.

At the same time, they voted out of office Mayor Frank Fields, who favored the drone-hunting idea that put the small town on the map — and not in a good way.

Deer Trail had become a national laughingstock over the idea that it would sell $25 drone-hunting licenses to people who would then aim for the unmanned aircraft.

The vote was the culmination of a long dispute over the proposal, which divided the town’s board of trustees, 3-3, in an August vote. While some contended the idea had the same mixed support among voters, the actual tally showed otherwise. Seventy-three percent of those who went to the polls voted against it.

Fields said the measure always was intended as a money-raiser for this tiny town, 55 miles east of Denver, not as a protest of government surveillance methods.

Regardless, it was a silly idea that deserved the fate that voters dealt it.